Laura Davis asks 10 people from different walks of life to reveal their most cherished books, ahead of the Daily Post’s LiveRead festival

TO CELEBRATE the opening of the first online literary festival to be held by a UK newspaper, we are launching a search for Liverpool’s favourite novel.

Daily Post readers are invited to vote for the book that is most close to their hearts - whether it’s a beloved children’s story or a one that has moved them as an adult.

To start you off, we’ve asked 10 Liverpool people to reveal their favourites.

Gemma Bodinetz, artistic director, Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse

1. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Heartbreaking, tender and powerful. Scout remains one of my favourite literary characters. It was one of the first novels I ever read and I think it encapsulates everything a good story should: fabulous and unforgettable characters, a gripping plot, a powerful evocation of a particular society and a political message against social injustice that never occludes the power of the narrative.

2. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

3. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

4. Cousin Bette by Balzac

5. Le Grand Meulnes by Alain-Fournier

6. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell

7. A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving

8. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

9. Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd

10. A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines

Few novels have so powerfully evoked the impotence of childhood when faced with neglect and brutality. I read it again recently when we were thinking of producing the stage version and was struck by how sadly resonant it still is.

Cllr Mike Storey, Lord Mayor of Liverpool

1. Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

2.We’re going on a bear hunt by Michael Rosen

3.Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly

4.Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

5.To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee

6.The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths

7.The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larson

8.Mistress of the Art of Death by Arianna Franklin

9.Revolution by CJ Sampson

10.The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseinn

Jane Davis, director, The Reader Organisation

1. Middlemarch by George Eliot

This great novel looks at the series of relationships that make up a small provincial town: how we’re connected to one another and why we do the things we do. The prose seems weighty at first but its worth persisting: you get attuned and there’s as much thinking about life in here as there is in Darwin’s Origin of Species.

2. The Corner by David Simon and Ed Burns

It’s not fiction but it is a great story and I think everyone who loves The Wire (which grew out of this book) will forgive me for including this terrific blockbuster, which does for the Baltimore corners what George Eliot did for Middlemarch

3.& 4. Gilead and Home by Marilynne Robinson

Gileadis the story of an old man looking back over his life and the lives of people he lives with as a pastor in his small Kansas town. Home is the sequel - the same story told from someone else’s point of view. Utterly brilliant, terrifying, moving, and also recommended by Barack Obama.

5. The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban.

Okay, this is a children’s novel about clockwork toys but read it anyway. A father and son try make their way through a cruel and dangerous world. One of the great post-holocaust novels, loads of jokes, and a happy ending.

6. The Assistant by Bernard Malamud

This wonderful 1950’s novel introduces to you Frankie Alpine, loser, a man you ain’t never gonna forget. He wants to be good, but how to start?

7. The Mayor Of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy.

This is what life is like for some of us, and it’s strangely good to recognise the remorseless pattern of mistake and mistake and mistake and mistake and mistake...

8. Still Life by AS Byatt

Yorkshire sisters go to South of France/have baby. There’s plenty to skip over if you aren’t interested in Van Gogh, for example, but read it for the brilliant accounts of family life - Christmas dinner with in-laws for the first time, or the unsurpassed account of giving birth. Nobody has written that, or love for a new baby, better.

9. Bleak House by Charles Dickens

One of his best ( and longest), this dark novel takes on problems of identity, connection, class... and the ability to read is central. The flight of Lady Dedlock is one of the most moving things dicken’s has written - all human life is here. And so contemporary...

10. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Because it may be the greatest novel ever written, plaiting individual lives into history - the panorama is immense, the close-ups recognisable and moving – and you’ll be amazed how easy it is to read - though I recommend a who’s who list of characters bookmark like the one I found in my second-hand hardback copy from Waterstone’s Secondhand Bookshop, top of Seel Street, 1978.

Richard Baker, Ranger Interpretation Service, Croxteth Country Park

1. The Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton

I find books evoke memories and whenever I see this book it brings back the pleasure of reading it in my own childhood, and the magic it created. Also the memories of reading it to my own children with the pleasure that it gave them. Enid Blyton was a marvellous writer and even now, when I see this book it transforms me to magical and exciting lands.

2. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

3. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

4. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

5. 1984 by George Orwell

6. The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatly

7. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

8. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

9. Fight Club by Palahniuk

10. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

Christoph Grunenberg, director, Tate Liverpool

1. Nicholson Baker by The Mezzanine

A master of minute observation and the involved narrative, letting us get lost in the exploration of apparently insignificant details, overlooked facts and hidden habits. No one sees the world like Baker does – an almost obsessive register of reality, compellingly and irresistibly presented.

2. Jonathan Coe by The Rotters’ Club

3. Howards End by EM Forster

4. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

5. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

6. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

7. Changing Places by David Lodge

8. Ghostwritten by David Mitchell

9. The Last World by Christoph Ransmayr

10. Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Andrew Collinge, celebrity hairdresser

1. The Fountain Head by Ayn Rand

This classic novel by Ayn Rand, although written in 1943, could apply to any era. The outline of the story is of an aspiring young architect who struggles against traditionalists.

It’s about embracing modernity and not compromising one’s beliefs, and ultimately being true to one’s self.

2. The Ghost by Robert Harris

3. 1984 by George Orwell

4. The Testament by John Grisham

5. Burial by Neil Cross

6. Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier

7. Doors open by Ian Rankin

8. Dissolution by C J Samson

9. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre

10. Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

Heather Forrester, human resources manager, What’s Cooking

1. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

One of my biggest reasons for choosing this book is because of the memories it holds for me of reading it with my father as a child of nine as well as embarking on one of my first literary discussions about the content with my grandfather, an avid Tolkien fanatic.

I loved the rich, vivid, magical world which was created, the language, the illustrations and the ideal that even the most unassuming of heroes can change the course of their own and others lives for the better, an idea which has run with me throughout my adult life.

2. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

3. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

4. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome

5. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

6. A Thousand splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini

7. The portrait of Dorian Grey Oscar Wilde

8. Harry Potter (the entire collection) by JK Rowling

9. Going Postalby Terry Pratchett

10. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin

David Fleming, director, National Museums Liverpool

1. Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth

A blistering novel about Liverpool and the transatlantic slave trade that won the Booker Prize in 1992. The book has immense energy and passion and it leaves you completely heartbroken.

2. The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

4. Call it Sleep by Henry Roth

5. And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov

6. Middlemarch by George Eliot

7. Light in August by William Faulkner

8. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

9. Hard Revolution by George Pelecanos

10. The Magician of Lublin by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Dr Cynthia Hamilton, associate professor and head of English at Liverpool Hope University

1. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

2. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

3. Beloved by Toni Morrison

4. Total Recall by Sara Paretsky

5. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

6. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

7. Moby Dick by Herman Melville

8. Catch 22 by Joseph Geller

9. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

10. The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Melanie Abrahams, guest curator, Literature at the Bluecoat

1. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

I’ve read this many, many times, a few occasions when feeling blue and looking for a lift. But it’s not one of those quick fix reads you can dip in and out of, you have to take your time. A wonderful book of journey, belonging and longing - magical, elegiac, and full of possibility.

2. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

3. The Phoenix and the Carpet by E Nesbit

4. The Dragon Can't Dance by Earl Lovelace

5. Lord Emsworth and Others by PG.Wodehouse

6. Shibboleth by Michael Donaghy

7. The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter

8. Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy

9. Other Stories and Other Stories by Ali Smith

10. The Groucho Letters by Groucho Marx

Click here to vote for your favourite novel